The November Stableford was played at East Devon on Saturday, writes Paul Willoughby.

The Saturday competitions are white tee jobs making the course 6,206 yards from tee to green.

Add to that the additional walking from the green to the next tee, say 40 yards a time, then a golfer who can (and does) hit the ball absolutely straight every time will walk just about 7,000 yards during his or her round or just short of 4 miles. However, I have yet to meet a golfer who hits the ball straight every time and most of us will zig-zag our way through the holes adding an extra mile to our day.

Now there are some who do regularly hit the ball straight and they are called ‘professionals’, and they earn an awful lot of money from doing so.

They have a season-long competition known as The Race to Dubai held throughout the year which covers 48 tournaments in 32 countries.

They accumulate points based on prize money won and at the end of the year, the top 10 players share a bonus of $5million. Dream on!

This year the race was won by Italian, Francesco Molinari who had 6,041,521 points. Second was Paddy Reed from the USA – you may remember him as the red faced chap who got rather over excited during the Ryder Cup, and which, despite his ‘excitement’, the Americans lost!

He had 4,713,35 points. Close on his heels was England’s Tommy Fleetwood (he still needs a haircut) with 4,399,755 points.

To put the points into perspective, the lowest ranked competitor in 324th place had 1,759. Well, you have to start somewhere and maybe in a few years time we’ll see his name (I’m not going to tell you who he is, but I will confirm he’s Italian) at the top of the leader board.

Now the all important scores. The Course Standard Scratch (explanation coming one day!) was 73 so the conditions were difficult.

Division 1: 1, Russell Corney, 36 points from a handicap of 6, now 5. Well done, Russell; 2, Bob Martin, 35 (4); 3, Tony Beck, 34 (7); 4, Alex Paget, 33 (5); 5, Jim Colvin, also 33 (4)

Division 2: 1, John May, 36 (9 now 8); 2, Jerry Roberts, 36 (11); 3, Geoff Walden, 34 (10); 4, Erik Nielsen, 33 (13); 5, Alan Dewhurst, 32 (12)

Division 3: 1, Eric Biddulph, 35 (14 now 13); 2, Bill Coles, also 35 (14 now 13); 3, Julian Reynolds, 33 (15); 4, Phil Keen, 33 (19); 5, Peter Dowling, 31 (19)

There were 92 players and eight of them scored twos, each receiving £22 – not quite up to the Race to Dubai bonus, but hey, the Pro’s pay tax on their winnings, we don’t!